All facets of business have come to realize that quality must be designed into a product or service, not inspected into it after design. Thus, quality can be defined as meeting the customer's needs and providing superior value. This focus on satisfying customer needs places an emphasis on techniques such as Quality Function Deployment, commonly referred to as QFD, to assist in understanding the customer needs and planning a product or service that provides for superior value.
QFD is a method used to identify critical customer requirements, commonly referred to as Critical-To-Quality (CTQ) attributes and to create a link between the CTQ attributes and design requirement parameters. QFD uses a series of matrices to document information collected, such as CTQ attributes and information developed, such as design requirement parameters and to represent the product or service provider's plan for designing the product or service.
Specifically, QFD employs the following general steps. Top-level product/service design requirements or technical characteristics are derived from customer needs, i.e., CTQs. Based on the top-level design requirements, product/service concepts are developed to satisfy these requirements and evaluated for the purpose of selecting the most optimum product/service concepts. Once optimum product/service concepts are selected, the product/service is divided into subcategories that identify sub-product/sub-service assemblies, processes or the like. In this regard, the top-level design requirements are flowed down to these sub-product/sub-service assemblies, processes or the like. Lower-level product/service requirements and specifications, such as assembly, process or component characteristics are derived from the sub-product/sub-service assemblies, or processes. For critical assemblies, processes or components, further flow down of the lower-level product requirements and specifications may be needed. Once the lower-level product/service requirements are defined, manufacturing or implementation process steps are determined to meet the lower-level product/service requirements. Based on the manufacturing or implementation process steps, set-up requirements, process controls and/or quality controls are determined to assure a successful execution of the product/service.
QFD, by its very structure and planning approach, requires an initial time investment in the development process to assure that the product or service provider understands and agrees with what needs to be done before initiating design functions. As a result, less time should be spent deciding on designs or in redesign based on the product not being on target.
However, the current QFD approach does not provide for quantifiably assessing the overall design process after the process has been completed and the product, service or the like has been designed. Moreover, the current QFD approach does not provide for determining which initially identified CTQs were delivered as intended and which may require further attention prior to release of the product/service.
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, methods, computer program products and the like for quantifiably assessing the affectivity of QFD planning. In this regard, the desired systems, methods, computer program products and the like should provide the product/service providers the ability to determine how well their new product/service design delivers against their original CTQs. As a result, the product/service providers can determine which CTQs require additional attention and, moreover, which high-level and/or low-level design requirements associated with the CTQs require additional attention. Such systems, methods, computer program products and the like would provide process/service stakeholders the ability to determine the quality delivered through the CTQs and design requirements and to identify which specific items require further analysis prior to product/service release or may require further analysis after product/service release.